Easy Food Prep For Your Daily And Weekly Routine #AMCoffee

Easy & Quick Food Prep Reminders

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• Desire to make something part of your life
• Steps we must take to succeed, and
• Making a first step towards our need, dream, necessity

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Your Sunday Routine

This doesn’t have to be a Sunday. It can be any day where you have a few hours to shop, cook, and prepare some food in advance. On this day, you can do things like:
• Buy groceries for the week (or at least the next several days); stocking up on easy staples such as canned beans, pre-washed veggies, etc.
• Cook large meals that can be refrigerated or frozen in smaller portions: chili, soups, veggies.
• Cook lean protein in bulk: e.g., roasting a couple of chickens, boiling several eggs, baked fish and so much more. I have also a pack of organic firm TOFU on hand every 10-12 days.
• Wash, peel, and chop veggies – I love to slice them up and freeze in smaller bags: Riced cauliflower, bell peppers, kale are some of my favorites

When all the kids were still living at home (we have 10), it was necessary to shop several times a week. When you go through 1 to 2 gallons of milk , along with a couple dozen eggs, and 2 lbs. or bacon….for breakfast each day, there isn’t enough room i the fridge to hold a weeks worth. I would prep for about 3 days at a time. Now, with just 4 of us at home, I generally shop just once a week.

I do freezing for a week for some of the foods I add to my dinners: riced broccoli, sliced bell peppers, huge amounts of kale.
I have at hand frozen peas and corn, too.
I just mix a bit of everything as I make my dinner.
Depending on the dish, I use either different proportions of the above.

EVENING Routine

If you are willing to take an extra 15 minutes in the evening, you can often prep enough healthy food for the following day. This can include:
• Making extra dinner so that they have leftovers for lunch the next day.
* Putting a bowl of steel-cut oats on the counter to soak overnight; in the morning,
* the oats will cook in no time flat.
* Doing a little extra veggie chopping or protein prep while dinner is cooking.
* Chopping some veggies and meat, putting it in a slow cooker dish, and refrigerating the dish; the next morning, you can pull the cooker dish out of the fridge, pop it into the cooker, turn the cooker on, and enjoy coming home to a delicious home-cooked meal.

I usually get my slow cooker ready the night before so i can just pop it in the next morning before leaving to work. And I almost always cook enough to have leftovers – the problem is getting hubby to eat leftovers! He’s not usually one to eat leftovers!

For the crockpot, I keep it simple usually – some type of roast -pork or beef and veggies. Add some seasoning and it’s done. Regular meals, I don’t really use recipes – I just throw stuff together and cook. We are fans of Mexican food so a lot of my cooking is some kind of Mexican.

I have no idea – I have never understood! There are some foods he will eat heated up – homemade Mexican beans, BBQ – but most everything else he won’t go near unless I push it on him! LOL He says he likes the taste of fresh cooked food and that heated up foods don’t taste the same!

Amanda,
Of course your huggy right – leftover does not taste good.
Many foods should not be reheated either.
What I do now on the regular basis is cook in small portions for 1-time eating. That’s it.
There are exceptions when we have larger leftovers. But most of days – freshly cooked from my frozen or fresh preserves!

I wish – I don’t know HOW to cook small! LOL I don’t make enough for a small army but definitely more than enough for us 3. I’ve never been able to scale down and have it taste the same since our son moved out! When he is here visiting, I never have leftovers! LOL

Elizabeth,
You do have other tricks up your sleeve with the lifestyle you navigated for so many years.
Share with us who do not have to buy 2 gallons of milk every day, how you managed to manage all pieces in this complex equation.

Well, I didn’t have all the kids at once LOL, so it was a learning process. We, of course, had to have a routine. We ate simple foods and rotated meals. We made school lunches once a week. On Saturday evenings the older kids would help. We would make and freeze sandwiches, bag up cookies and chips (LOL, this was before SAMS Club and Costco came along – then I started buying the huge boxes of individual bags of chips/treats). In the mornings, they would each grab a sandwich out of the freezer, pick the chips and cookies that they wanted for the day. There were always banana and apples on the kitchen counter. Washed and bagged up grapes in the fridge…along with carrot and celery sticks.

Breakfast would be eggs, bacon, toast, cereal and milk. They all went to a magnet school so they had a long bus ride to and from. I wanted to make sure that they ate well before leaving the house. I baked bread everyday, so when they got home from school, they would go through a loaf or two. Usually with honey butter or jam. Milk was always available along with orange juice or apple juice.

Dinners, as I said before, were simple. Spaghetti, chicken and yellow rice, meatloaf with mashed potatoes, baked chicken, tacos…things like that. We usually had salad with every meal To this day, I have to stop myself from using 3 heads of lettuce for salad, and peeling 10lbs. of potatoes at a time.

BREAKFAST Routine

* This one is for the morning people. If you are willing to take an extra 15 minutes in the morning, you can prep healthy food for the rest of the day. This can include: • Making a Super Shake to bring with you to work.
* Packing a lunch (e.g. pre-frozen chili or other bulk meal, dinner leftovers, a wrap).
* Doing a little extra veggie chopping or protein prep while breakfast is cooking.
• Chopping some veggies and meat, putting it in a slow cooker, and the next morning, turn the cooker on, and enjoy coming home to a delicious home-cooked meal.

I am NOT a morning person but I do have to pack our daughter’s lunch every morning (although I usually do most of the prep the night before or on Sunday) and either hubby or I make us smoothies/shakes for a tide me over until we can eat something else. Luckily our daughter is fed free breakfast at school so I don’t HAVE to make her anything. She isn’t too fond of some of the food they serve though (and I can’t blame her either because I wouldn’t eat some of that “healthy” crap!) so I make sure I have healthy “pop tarts” on hand for those days she doesn’t like what they are serving (thank you Nature’s Path for FINALLY making organic ones! Just wish we could find Annie’s pop tarts around here!).

i am a morning person i am a nut i have to have jacks lunch made the night before and the house cleaned before i go to bed no dishes in the sink every thing has to be just right i like it that way and we plan meals and put alot in the freezer

When You’re At The STORE

Even if you feel you can’t spare 15 minutes, you can at least spare one minute. One-minute “plan and prep” actions can include:

When you’re already at the store:

* Pick up a rotisserie chicken.
* Pick up pre-washed vegetables or pre-made salads.
* Think ahead to the food prep sessions and buy in bulk.
* Grab an apple or bag of baby carrots to snack on as you peruse the aisles, so you
* don’t make decisions while being insane from hunger.

Now this is something that I do on a regular basis – I will buy 5 or 6 rotisserie chickens at a time. We eat one the day I purchase them. The others I slice, chop and or mince. I freeze in zip-top bags and we use them for meals throughout the week. We eat the white meat, and the dark meat is added to our dogs kibble.

Never shop hungry is a rule for me. We just finished off this weeks rotisserie chicken in chicken quesadillas last night. Quick, easy and yummy.
I love making my own salads but lots of times being able to open the bag and be done is a time saver.

I will usually toss out a few suggestions on what to cook and hubby and daughter will either ya or nay it. Lately though our daughter has been nay-ing anything that has chicken or pork. The only meat she wants to eat is steak (i.e beef) which we rarely buy. Needless to say she hasn’t been eating much meat lately – she will eat the sides thankfully.

Most of the time, I anticipate that I’m not going to want to make dinner…so I text my husband and have him pick something up on his way home from work. After feeding a family of 12 for so many years, I am sick of cooking. Thankfully we don’t eat take out every night, at we have 2 grown kids living at home. They are both good cooks and will each make a meal or two each week.

well i dont have this problem i have my 2 freezer stocked and my pantry busting out see we grow all our food and in the summer we work real hard and up it up for winter and this is how i have been doing it for years